The Lid: Trump Ready to Air It Out

Welcome to The Lid, your afternoon dose of the 2016 ethos…The bad news for Trump is that the Republican speechwriter who wrote the address for the “Benghazi mom” speech at the GOP convention now says he might vote for Hillary Clinton. The good news is that, after today’s announced shake-up, Trump may still have a chance of holding onto Scott Baio’s speechwriter.

Donald Trump’s campaign shake-up comes the same day as some other big news for the GOP nominee -- his campaign is finally going to run general election television ads! NBC News confirms a Wall Street Journal Report that Trump will begin airing ads in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania on Friday, with more to come in the following weeks. He’s trailing in each of those states, according to a round of NBC/WSJ/Marist polls released last week. The surveys revealed Trump is down five in Ohio and Florida, and trailing Hillary Clinton by nine in North Carolina and 11 in Pennsylvania. Of those four, North Carolina is the only state Mitt Romney won in 2012. And the Clinton campaign is going hard in the Tar Heel State. Charlotte (7) and Raleigh-Durham (10) are both in the top ten markets for most ad spending in the 2016 race and Tim Kaine spent the early part of this week there, making plenty of promises to return again soon. So despite Trump’s previous claims he could expand the GOP map, right now he’s in danger of shrinking it.